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The iOS Simulator consists of (some of) the userspace components of iOS compiled to run on macOS. This would be a full iPhone image running as-is via virtualiza
by restes 19d ago
The iOS Simulator consists of (some of) the userspace components of iOS compiled to run on macOS. This would be a full iPhone image running as-is via virtualization.
- RussianCow 19d agoThat explains the difference, but what's the purpose?
- a012 19d agoYou can test your application, game, website without a physical phone?
- leoh 19d agoCan do that with the simulator too
- refulgentis 19d agoRunning on ported userspace components, with a shim, isn't the same as running on the OS in itself. That really matters, sometimes. But not the vast majority of the time. (source: been coding iOS since pre-SDK iPhone OS 1.0)
- dingdongditchme 19d agoIs the simulator faster than this? I would suspect so.
- RussianCow 19d agoCan you give some examples of where it matters? I'm genuinely curious.
- bradfitz 19d agoLast I checked, VPN network extensions wouldn't run in the simulator.
- afavour 18d agoIt’s been years but I ran into a problem with a notification extension years ago. Worked fine on simulator, not on device. Turned out it was because I was using a HEIF image and (I think) the on-device extension was trying to use hardware decoding and didn’t have access to it. Meanwhile the simulator had no such sandboxing restrictions. The difference doesn’t matter until it does, and then it’s infuriating to work out what’s going on.
- gitgud 18d ago> The difference doesn’t matter until it does, and then it’s infuriating to work out what’s going on. I love this quote, reminds me how annoying it can be when something isn’t reproducible locally… only in production…
- DonHopkins 18d agoTesting AR apps, or any app that relies on hardware you can't simulate easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43b5ywnYpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T43b5ywnYpo
- cfn 19d agoI have had instances where the app runs fine on the simulator but crashes on the device. This might solve that.
- leoh 19d agoIf functional, you can download apps from the App Store, sign in to iCloud.. probably do a bunch of agentic stuff as if you had a real device
- Sajarin 19d agoLooks like apple services compatibility is not currently supported for this [0] [0] https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli/discussions/175 https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli/discussions/175
- rvz 19d agoExactly. It means it cannot download apps from the App Store or use Apple services and Apple knows this deliberate limitation.
- discordance 19d agoIf you read a bit further, there's a jailbroken variant that has Sileo and Trollstore installed, so you can run whatever IPAs
- QuantumNomad_ 18d agoWhere? Edit: ah now I see, in the main readme under heading Firmware Variants. https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli#firmware-variants https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli#firmware-variants
- VladVladikoff 19d agoSpam. Click farms. Etc.
- trollbridge 19d agoIt would also make testing far easier. I got bit with something that failed on real life iPhones with language set to es_US that worked fine on the simulator.
- trueno 19d agooh. is this why icloud spam texts are running wild now
- greggsy 19d agoNo, it’s just trivial to generate iCloud email addresses that won’t get picked up by spam filter.
- whynotmaybe 19d agoThe simulator doesn't have a camera. The android emulator allows to configure the camera and use a picture, it's very handy to test your qr/barcode reader without needing to use a physical device. Maybe this also allows to use an image as camera?
- gcampos 19d agoYou cannot run Network Extensions on the simulator
- landr0id 19d agoIt's useful for security research since you can do kernel debugging and inspection of the device not possible in the simulator. As others pointed out it's also useful for e.g. click/spam farms which need a "real" iPhone.